Critics Allege ‘Good Old Boy Network’ at Sweetwater Authority

The Sweetwater Authority is poised to award a $150,000 consulting contract to a former employee who once sued the agency.

Sweetwater Reservoir on Jan. 13, 2024. / Ariana Drehsler for Voice of San Diego

by Jim Hinch | Voice of San Diego | September 25, 2024

Correction: The subhead and a key sentence of this story were updated to clarify that Sweetwater Authority board member Steve Castaneda does not have close ties to Michael Garrod.

An agency that provides drinking water to roughly 200,000 people in South San Diego County is poised to award a $150,000 consulting contract to a former employee who once sued the agency and has close ties to a governing board member. 

Directors at Wednesday’s board meeting of the Sweetwater Authority in Chula Vista will vote on awarding the $225-per-hour consulting contract to Michael Garrod, a retired engineering manager who, along with three other employees, sued the agency in 2012 for allegedly discriminating against non-white employees and retaliating against people who complained. The lawsuit was settled in 2014 with no admission of wrongdoing by the agency. Garrod withdrew his complaint after one of the other plaintiffs settled. 

The proposed contract is for Garrod’s help with what authority General Manager Carlos Quintero described as the agency’s “water resources efforts.” Tasks include advising on construction projects, helping to update the agency’s water resources master plan and “answer[ing] questions and giv[ing] opinions on various water resources issues,” according to a copy of the contract. Sweetwater Authority supplies drinking water to National City and parts of Chula Vista and nearby unincorporated communities. 

Among board members expected to vote on the contract is Hector Martinez, one of Garrod’s co-plaintiffs in the 2012 lawsuit and a co-founder with Garrod of the local Chula Vista Democratic Club. Martinez and Garrod have remained friends since Garrod’s retirement. In a Facebook post from last year, Martinez complimented Garrod’s physique in a vacation photo: “Are you lifting weights? Look at those arms!” 

Also expected to vote is board member Steve Castaneda, a Chula Vista public relations consultant whose wife is the president of the Chula Vista Democratic Club. 

Critics, including members of the agency’s own board of directors, said awarding a no-bid contract to a former employee with an adversarial past and friends on the board is part of a recent pattern of nepotism and mismanagement at the drinking water provider. 

“It is egregious,” said Jim Smyth, a former Sweetwater general manager who retired in 2017 and now says current leaders at the agency are wasting ratepayers’ money on pet projects and contracts with a “good old boy network” of friends. “Where is Mr. Garrod’s resume?” Smyth said. “Handing him a $150,000 contract is not appropriate [without a bidding process and] just gives the perception of cronyism.” 

Neither Garrod nor Martinez responded to requests for comment. 

The proposed $150,000 consulting arrangement would be the third awarded to Garrod in the past 18 months. Last year and earlier this year, Quintero awarded Garrod two contracts totaling $75,000 “for guidance on the planning of specialty projects,” according to an agency memo. 

Quintero defended all three contracts, saying Garrod is uniquely qualified for the job. 

“Michael is an expert in the work that he does,” Quintero said, adding that the contracts were not put out to competitive bid because, as a former employee, Garrod has knowledge that would be hard to find elsewhere. “He helped us build” many of the facilities involved in the consulting work, Quintero said. 

Smyth, who hired Garrod at Sweetwater, said he disagreed that Garrod has unique expertise that warrants a no-bid contract. Instead, he said, the contract is part of a wider pattern of mismanagement at the agency. 

Smyth recently filed a complaint with the San Diego County Grand Jury alleging that Sweetwater board members have been wasting ratepayers’ money on unjustified pay raises for themselves and numerous agency-funded trips to soirees, banking summits and other events unrelated to Sweetwater business. 

“Staff members are getting promoted to levels of incompetence,” Smyth said, and experienced employees are leaving the agency because Quintero, who had never run a water agency before coming to Sweetwater, “had no management experience” and rarely comes to the office, preferring to work from his home in Riverside County. 

The staff exodus has led agency leaders to rely increasingly on consultants to do work that staff employees could do more cheaply, Smyth said. 

Quintero acknowledged that part of the reason he is seeking the $150,000 contract with Garrod is because Sweetwater’s water resources engineer recently left the agency and took a job with San Diego County. 

But Quintero insisted there is no staff exodus. “Employees leave for a variety of reasons,” he said. “It’s hard to recruit…Sometimes hiring takes time.” 

As for the claim that he is often an absentee manager, Quintero said, “I am in the office when I need to be in the office.” He declined to specify how many days a week he is at the agency’s Chula Vista headquarters. “I have a very flexible schedule,” he said. 

Of the agency’s 138 budgeted full-time positions, 21 are currently vacant, according to a recent internal agency performance report. “That’s a record number of vacancies,” said agency board member Josie Calderon-Scott, who has been critical of recent decisions at the agency and voted against the board pay raises and what she described as other wasteful proposals. 

“I checked with other water districts,” Calderon-Scott said. “They’re not having the same [employee retention] problem, and they asked, ‘What’s going on at Sweetwater? We’re getting so many applications from Sweetwater employees.’” 

Board member Ron Morrison, who has criticized recent management decisions, traced many of the agency’s current troubles to the 2018 return of Hector Martinez to the board of directors. Morrison, who is also mayor of National City, serves on the board because Sweetwater supplies drinking water to his city. 

Martinez settled his 2012 discrimination lawsuit against Sweetwater in 2014. He was paid $175,000 and agreed never to work for the water authority again. The settlement specifies that the authority “denies all allegations of improper or unlawful conduct made by Martinez” and settled the case “merely to avoid further litigation.” 

The settlement, however, did not bar Martinez from seeking election to the agency’s board of directors, which he did four years later in 2018. Since then, said Morrison, “people think [Martinez] just wants to be general manager” and is using his position on the board to enact policies he was unable to pursue when he was passed over for promotion during his career. 

Morrison said the contract with Garrod is part of a pattern of Martinez pursuing pet projects and favoring friends when conducting Sweetwater business. Among those projects is a proposal to build a recycled wastewater treatment facility that Morrison said earlier studies showed was not cost effective. The contract with Garrod includes a “recycled water analysis” to be performed in conjunction with a company that builds wastewater treatment facilities. 

Quintero said neither Garrod’s contract nor the scope of his duties were dictated by Martinez or reflect a pattern of awarding agency business to friends. 

“Suggesting that Dr. Martinez is in charge is not true,” he said, adding that the full board decided on the agency’s water resources plan and Garrod is being offered a contract to help execute that plan. “It’s up to the board to decide” whether to hire Garrod, Quintero said. 

“We’re focused on keeping rates low and [helping] with sustainability challenges,” Quintero said. “There are a couple of people in our service area who don’t like what we’re doing” and criticize agency management. The rest “of our customers, they’re fine. They get their water and have no complaints.” 

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Ron Morrison voted against the pay raises. The only no vote was from Josie Calderon-Scott.

Source: Jim Hinch is Voice of San Diego's South county reporter. He can be reached by email at Jim.Hinch@voiceofsandiego.org and followed on Twitter @JimKHinch.

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